Have you read ...?

Craziness...

Banking policies... intrigue me. Things have changed a lot in our economy from when I was young... when getting a paycheck cashed meant going to the bank and getting cash. Of course, you 'could' put your money in a checking account, but checks weren't accepted everywhere and you had to track your spending carefully because a check could sit uncashed for weeks before making it back to your bank and having an effect on your balance. Some people took advantage of that fact, of course, so policies were put in place for insufficient funds and 'bounced' checks.

Today though... banks are digitally connected. Running your debut card at a store both verifies the availability of funds and immediately places a charge on the account. A short period of time is allowed for chargebacks and corrections, but all that information is there. Available. And yet... if you deposit a payroll check to a bank... that information may somehow take days to be verified and your money made available to you? How can this be possible? If a verify from my debut card that there is money available for a purchase... how can a bank be unable to contact another bank via a routing and account number to do the same? Worse... the bank providing those funds for payroll from your company's accounts? Already gone from them. So for some 48-72 hours... funds have left one bank and your employer's accounts... but have not yet arrived in your account at your bank. And sometimes that's the same bank!

Is the money on vacation? Is it sight seeing in Rio? That's a long time for money to travel digitally from bank to bank... and I can't help but wonder who is making a profit off the fact that that money is in transit... somewhere?

Strange banking questions aside... we have a great piece from our newest canon member that's been sitting in review for too long and I'm happy to finally release to the public. This is "One Woe Doth Tread Upon Another's Heel" by Phoenix-Spiritus and like Elrod's "Veni, Vidi, Cutie" it deals with some of the remaining fallout from the end of the Spring semester, Gen 1 side. If you have tissues left, you might want to have them handy.